123178-morning-coffee-3mar2015-did-you-know-edition
Content ---- ---- I can't wait for Thaydfest! The Saddles are running a pair of events, and I think I've got a spot and a process for the dueling contest. I am taking suggestions on both it and the mounted race. We will have a CREDD apiece for the overall winners as well as prizes for the next few runners up! I really hope ZTF shows up at the Shadowcaster. I got home with my brain a complete blank, not having the brainpower to really tank anything. I started asking around for opinions on the Shadowcaster. I was told that the guns weren't big enough.... So I made the guns bigger. That necessitated shifting the sails. I also made our wind turbines bigger. Having done that, I decided to set up some better signage for the main bar (which still doesn't have a name; I'll maybe get on the guild to see if anyone has any ideas). This led to a pretty drastic restructuring of some of the vendor stalls on the Waist, new signage being put up, the seating removed from the waist, and new seating being put in the "blank" divider wall in the bar. All in all, I love the changes. I hate working against the decor cap, though. It's sad but true; I'll never have enough decor space for the topside bar. Luckily, I think I'm at 750-something placed decor down in the Bilge and that looks packed. I added a service elevator that takes you down to the mechanical and storage areas (not shown in the bilge; it's down another "deck"), some new items to the security checkpoint, and a few more items in our lounge area. I don't think I could get to 1000/1000 downstairs without making a total mess of it.... though that's probably in my future because I can't seem to stop adding to the damn thing. I'm calling it done though, and would love to announce War Stories night on Saturday nights! We don't have a starting time picked out (probably 8 or 9), but we are hosting an RP event in the bar where people can drop in and tell stories about battles fought and won or lost, glory and loss, and basically get a few minutes to tell a great story from their character's history! Let me know if you're interested in coming! See you all on Nexus! | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Sounds like good times! :D I know I need to get my head wrapped around how to lead a vet SoTR. It's in organization that we end up getting bronze rather than silver, and that's on me. | |} ---- Oh, Siege of Tempest Refuge. I actually like this one a lot of the adventures. Ran it a lot. Here's what I'd suggest as a going in position: 1) Tank and healer take center. Assign your strongest solo DPS to one side, the other two to the other side. I don't know if there's a preference north or south, they're both fairly close, but I tend to solo north lane and duo south lane. Solo lane helps to have either high dps, or some self heals (esper has great solo sustain for example). 2) For the men, I recommend 1 north, 1 south, 3 center. The North and South side I tend to level them up towards Shocktrooper. This gives a shield buff to PCs in the vicinity of the guard, and they have minimal tanking ability. For the center, there are a variety of strategies. I'd recommend at least one Pyro (anti-personnel DPS) and 1 Medic. The Medics if I remember correctly will interrupt too, so you'll get some of that benefit during boss fights. None of the NPC abilities are overpowered, but they're sort of a nice oomph at random moments. 3) The main Gold-award breaking issue is Saboteurs and they tend to show up frequently and often times while other events are in place. Make it the tank (and possibly medic)'s job to head back to the generator. Engineer Particle Ejector is great for ferreting out the stealthed sabos. Priority MUST be on the bombs. You don't have to kill the Sabos immediately and you don't have to find all of them, just find the ones that can satchel charge the generator as fast as possible. Then the tank can hold them while the DPS finishes up what they're doing and comes and kills them. 4) Make sure people are bringing your snares. Esper Restraint is great for this as it is a root. Engineer tank Shock Pulse is a snare. If you have voice comm going, try to make sure people aren't using their root/snare abilities all at once on the same tank... stagger them. 5) For add phases, it can get overwhelming. If necessary make sure your DPS know they should aggro the adds and drag them to the center for the tank to pick up if it becomes overwhelming. Add quantity per lane is random. I've seen 0-4. Anyone with an empty lane CAN help the others, though a full North to South run is frequently pointless and puts everyone out of position for the next wave. 6) Healer at center can feel somewhat free to roam as long as tank is not strained. 7) Know the boss abilities, know which abilities to interrupt. 8) If you get SPECIALISTS, kill them as fast as humanly possible because there is a very high probability of getting a bunker buster next. Also dodge like crazy as their flash bangs blind in the most annoying way possible. Very difficult to tank these because of the flash bangs. Overall, the main trick is making sure people know their jobs and stick to them and not losing your head. LoneStar Heroes can rapidly screw up Tempest Refuge. It's a team effort. If someone doesn't like their assignment, either tell them where to stick it, or if there's a reasonable accomodation, make that. Lots of PUG groups failed due to this. "Oh Person X doesn't need any help, I'll just play the roaming DPS". Then Person X gets overwhelmed and dies and the roamer is over by the solo DPS who is managing herself nicely, and it turns into a cascade failure. Having a plan and doing it by the numbers leads to a super easy gold Tempest Refuge. Hope that helped! | |} ---- Some of that may help. We don't have an assignment problem, ironically. I tend to handle the center (as a warrior tank) and take two guys with me. Then I slap the highest DPS and the healer on one side and the two remaining DPS on the other side, with two guys helping the highest DPS and one guy helping the other two. If someone finishes their group before me, they come run to help me, then run back. We actually manage the waves pretty well. Our biggest problem was that we had an assault tank show up at the same time as a saboteur group, and that's where it went belly up, I didn't know what to do, whether you stop the saboteurs first (we needed all hands DPSing to get the tank down) or whether you go after the tank first (in which case the saboteurs would have bombed us to Hell and back). That's the sort of thing I need to know and work on; I don't know what to do in situations like that yet. We also had a hard time on some of the bosses because, being a pretty casual crowd (and me having been a grunt, not a knowledgeable leader the first time through running vets) I don't know every thing every boss does. And some of them are some serious mechanical checks. Maybe that's just something that comes with experience. Regardless, I think we've only failed once (though we came close), and I really like the adventure. I just think I'm sort of the problem because I'm not up to speed as a group leader yet, but the guild groups are pretty patient with me while I sort things out and try to get through all of this stuff. I could just really use some better boss memory for these bosses and I have to know what to do in all situations. Maybe some of this gets better as the group upgrades in gear and those tanks aren't making it almost to the generator; we can then spare some people to round up the saboteurs a little faster. Those assault tanks are a PITA. Any advice on that front? | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Thanks a lot for these, Rem! We all have so much to learn. Doing these and being good at doing these is just not the education for leading a group in these. This kind of information is incredibly helpful to someone like me who really has to learn the intricacies of these fights and be able to coordinate a group around them. I really want us to gold medal this thing; I think we're more than capable if I can get my act together and know what we'll be doing. | |} ---- ---- If you have the plat, pre-Archivos crafted gear will get you Vet Dungeon ready if you fully unlock and populate the rune slots. It is utterly essential that you know the stat guidelines for your role. I think all DPS are mainstat to 1680 > AP then AP. Chances are you won't have the stat budget to start worrying about anything else until you start picking up Dungeon purples. Purples are not automatically better. I'll say it again: Purples are not automatically better. They may have a larger stat budget but they de-emphasize mainstat to spend it on secondary stats. Know what your recommended runesets are. Re-rolling runeslots is still stupid expensive. Thankfully unless you're doing bleeding edge progression raiding you don't need to optimize. The Runemaster addon helps immensely. You can use it to plan where to stick which rune and how much of each set you have. It also tells you what have already slotted. | |} ---- ---- ----